


The Man Who Started The Fire

by Bobbadopolous



Category: Emmerdale, robron
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 12:40:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9235643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bobbadopolous/pseuds/Bobbadopolous
Summary: Angsty Robert set around the upcoming crisis talks





	

Robert stood in shock surveying the scene but not really a part of it. He was just now, for the first time, comprehending that he wasn’t the problem.   
Well he was, of course he was - his infidelity, his penchant for manipulation rather than communication and the ever-fainter but still echoing words he’d spoken more than a year ago in the Scrapyard – they’d all accumulated to fuel this particular fire but they hadn’t started it. He hadn’t started it.  
While once he might’ve taken a smug kind of comfort from the fact that he could blame someone else and walk away from the situation relatively clean, and perhaps even revel a little in the carnage of it all, in this instance it left him cold.  
Because along with the revelation that he hadn’t started fire came the crippling realisation that he wasn’t going to be able to put it out… at least not on his own.  
No amount of ‘I’m sorry’, ‘she means nothing to me’, or ‘no one comes close’ was going to be enough to silence Aaron’s demons, no amount of hugging him tightly or holding him close was going to stop the ground shaking beneath Aaron’s feet.   
Robert looked into Aaron’s eyes and knew, KNEW, that Aaron wanted so badly to trust him.   
He looked into those leaking, stinging, rubbed-raw eyes and knew that Aaron loved him, wanted him, wanted so badly to hold onto him. But Robert also knew that Aaron would never believe that anyone could love him back. And that was the problem.  
Robert hadn’t helped…BOY had he not helped, he couldn’t have been less helpful if he’d tried. His only excuse was that he hadn’t seen… he hadn’t been able to see until just this moment exactly how deep the problem ran and just how much his past actions had fed into it.  
There’d always been reasons to explain away Aaron’s insecurities, the affair in which Aaron had taken a backseat to Chrissie, the yelling matches that had seen them rip each other apart and of course Robert’s well documented short attention span when it came to romantic partnerships.  
Robert reasoned that anyone would have trust issues after what he’d put Aaron through. But as time wore on his inability to regain Aaron’s trust had frustrated him. It was an endless exercise in boarding the apology hamster wheel and going round and round and never getting anywhere.   
Frustration with the situation soon became frustration with Aaron.  
Why couldn’t he see, by the lengths that Robert had gone to, that he was a changed man, that he could be trusted?   
Robert didn’t like seeing himself through Aaron’s eyes on the days when Aaron was suspicious and hurt and just generally miserable, mostly because Robert didn’t like seeing himself as the asshole he’d been when he was with Chrissie.   
He didn’t feel he was that man anymore and he wanted Aaron to feel the same.  
Now standing in their bedroom watching Aaron fall apart Robert couldn’t deny that he was at the very least as selfish as he’d ever been. He’d spent the past weeks, months even, thinking this was all about him and using this misinformation to fuel his own indignation. Why couldn’t Aaron see how much he’d changed? Why couldn’t Aaron understand how much he loved him? When in actuality Robert should’ve been asking himself why he couldn’t see what the real problem was.  
The problem that had nothing… or at least significantly less … to do with him and almost everything to do with Aaron.  
Aaron had never in his life known any kind of lasting happiness. Any periods of levity and contentment had inevitably ended in trauma and despair. A carefree childhood ending in horror... happiness and acceptance with his first love ending with indelible blood on his too-young hands and their own, hard-fought love now twice-threatened by cruel fate.  
All signs teaming up to confirm for Aaron what he already suspected was true, that all happiness was fleeting or false or both.   
Robert should’ve seen … should’ve known. So maybe Aaron had been holding on a little too tight, maybe he’d been needy and unsure… it was so clear now that Aaron was just hanging on for dear life and waiting for the fall.  
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Robert so much as he didn’t trust any happiness to be genuine or lasting. He couldn’t trust it because he’d never had it, didn’t know what it looked like, felt like only that it would end and end horrifically, leaving him worse off than before.  
What ‘worse off than before’ looked like after last year Robert didn’t want to know.  
But Aaron had allowed himself to fall for Robert, to pursue Robert and finally to give Robert another chance. Aaron had opened himself up to the worst kind of hurt knowing, and in fact expecting, it would end badly for him.   
Now he was holding on, trying to secure the happiness he had taken for himself with the desperation of a man trying to hold back the tide with a bucket.  
Robert wanted to tell him he loved him, and man did he love him. He wanted to tell him he had nothing to worry about and then work every day to make it the truth. He wanted to hold him and tell him he’d never let go and he wouldn’t. But none of it would make the difference because Aaron didn’t doubt Robert, not really, he doubted his own ability to hold onto happiness and his worthiness in possessing it.  
Robert breathed deeply, sadness threatening to choke him in an uncomfortably literal way.  
He wondered if he reached out now whether Aaron would let him touch him.  
“Aaron?” he said softly, keeping his hands to himself for the moment.  
Aaron refused to look at him and Robert could only guess at the emotions running through him.  
“Aaron will you look at me please.”  
Aaron finally turned his head and lifted his chin to meet Robert’s eye and Robert startled slightly at the defeat he saw there.  
“I love you,” he said reaching out tentatively with both hands and resting them on either side of Aaron’s stubbled jaw. “I know you know that.”  
Aaron gave the smallest of nods.  
“Good,” Robert said removing tears from Aaron’s cheeks with his thumbs as they continued to fall.  
“There’s something else I want you to know,” Robert continued his voice taut with emotion, “I want you to know that I understand why you can’t trust me right now, why you can’t trust us…or this”  
At first Aaron looked uncertain and that confusion quickly gave way to fear.  
“It’s Ok,” Robert assured him, “I know there’s nothing I can do to convince you…”  
Aaron looked really afraid now.  
“So I’m just going to keep loving you,” Robert said and he meant it with everything he had, “God Aaron I can’t stop… so I’m going to keep loving you and we are going to find someone else to help you figure out the rest.”  
Aaron looked into Robert’s face with renewed hope.  
“Will you agree to see someone?” Robert asked knowing it was always a risky topic but knowing there was no other option.  
Aaron nodded slowly, “I don’t want to feel like this anymore.”  
Robert hadn’t expected Aaron to speak but he was buoyed with hope when he did.  
“I know you don’t and I know you fought hard not to feel this way…”  
“I really wanted to trust you Rob, I really did I promise but it’s so loud in here,” Aaron said tapping his head none too gently until Robert felt the need to intervene taking Aaron’s hand into his and softly kissing the backs of his fingertips.  
“It’s telling me it won’t last,” Aaron cried and the tears that had never entirely ceased flowed with renewed vigour, “and everything that happens… I just think this will be it, this will finally be the thing that ends it. The scars, the nightmares, the crash…” Aaron trailed off.  
“Rebecca,” Robert said finishing off the list for him.  
Aaron nodded his hand still resting in Robert’s own, he now wrapped his fingers around Robert’s firmly but not painfully. Just barely holding on, Robert thinks to himself.  
“She’s not a threat,” Robert said for the thousandth time but he wasn’t annoyed anymore at having to repeat himself, he’d gladly say it a million times more if it brought Aaron a single moment of peace.  
Aaron shrugged sadly, an admission that the logical part of his brain knew it but the emotionally scarred and traumatised part couldn’t let him accept it.  
“Just the way I’m built,” he said part explanation part apology.  
“No,” Robert said shaking his head suddenly sad and angry in equal measure but not at Aaron, never at Aaron.   
Anger at the man who had started the fire.


End file.
